


Return Of The Wraith

by carloabay



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, Minor Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck, emotionally constipated teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24743764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carloabay/pseuds/carloabay
Summary: On a mission to bring down the infamous trader called the Gull, Inej allows herself to get sidelined with nostalgia.
Relationships: Inej Ghafa & Original Character(s), Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa
Comments: 8
Kudos: 54





	1. The Wraith's Calling

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not usually a rabid fangirl but when Leigh Bardugo announced the TV series I am not ashamed to say that I genuinely cried. 
> 
> Cannot WAIT!!

At first, the waves tested her balance. Not as if she couldn't hold it, but like the gentle rocking of the rope that only threatened a larger mistake. Thankfully, the ship Kaz bought was nothing like the slavery vessel that had slung her across a hungry ocean, not so long ago. She was plain-sailed and gleaming fresh, and she soared over the waves like her planks were feathers and her sails were wings. She was steady and fast and easy. She was called the Wraith, a dream of a ship, and Inej was, very slowly, falling in love. Again.

They were a crew of one hundred exactly: Inej's band of hunting dogs, her collection of ghosts. They ranged from seasoned sailors like Jan and Letitia, to bristling warriors like Amandi, to revenge-seekers and former slaves like Oktai and Inej herself. 

Inej had thought she belonged amongst her people in Ravka, with the smell of rising bread and wildflowers, but standing on the deck of a ship, with salt-flecked lips and a raw wind stripping strands of hair from her plait, she knew she'd been wrong. It doesn't matter where you belong. Home had always been home, but the Wraith, alight on the water and seeking revenge, was her calling for now. Perhaps when the world was rid of human traffickers, she'd find peace at home, but for now, the sea bore her ever onwards.

They spent months at sea, following the paths strung by the letters Kaz scrawled to Inej, full of information about the slave traders crawling the waves. Inej followed them to their ends, bled the intelligence dry, and took down trader after trader. 

She supposed, in a way, that Kaz had become her Spider. Her eyes in the dark, her ears on the wind. But after a while, the letters began to thin out, and although Inej had all the information she needed, she missed them. She scolded herself for it; he wasn't writing her out of sheer sentimentality. Kaz was a criminal, a gang leader, not a boy sending love letters.

But he _was_ a boy. She remembered him, grinning like a maniac as they'd driven a tank through the wall of the Ice Court. She remembered him tussling with Jesper without his cane, fists and elbows, rough and carless. She remembered him, blood on his lips and knuckles, drunk on his own recklessness, challenging a house full of dangerous ruffians to a fight.

He _was_ a boy. A boy with steel layers and concrete walls that, to Inej, were nothing more than glass.

Fool, Inej. All you had to do was pretend that you couldn't see through him. All of that had led her here, rocking on her chair in her cabin in time with the ocean outside and beneath, Kaz’s letter heating her fingers as she watched it burn, held aloft against the windows.

There was a rapping on the cabin door, hurried and urgent, and the knocker didn't wait for an answer before bursting in. It was Damu, a Zemeni sailor and the navigator of the Wraith, eyes alight with excitement. Inej dropped the burning ashes of the letter on her desk and sat up, ready for good news.

"Yes?"

"We've found the Gull, Captain. She's making for port on Kerch. Do we follow?" The Gull was a notoriously slippery slave trader that usually criss-crossed the True Sea, using Kerch as a restocking and selling point, and hitting small, unimportant places up and down the coasts of West Ravka, Fjerda and Eames Chin. They were not so brave as to try and steal people from Shu Han's well-protected towns.

"How many miles between us?" Inej asked, glancing out of the window at the broiling sea and scudding clouds.

"Eleven. Crow's nest spotted her on our starboard side." The Wraith was fast. They could intercept, free the slaves and sink the ship before the Gull got to Kerch. On the other hand, the Wraith could sneak into Fifth Harbour after the Gull, wait for the opportune moment, then steal the entire ship and add her to Inej's growing network and collection of hunters. It would be a risk, and would have to be a quick operation, but Inej wasn't new to either of those things. Besides, the Gull was a jewel of a vessel, and Inej envied her commander; they had evaded the Wraith so far for a week at least, and that was a feat in itself. Damu was still waiting for an answer. Inej tapped her right wrist, where Sankt Petyr waited, coiled beneath a spring. The knife Kaz had given her, her first knife - Ketterdam's knife, she supposed.

"We follow," she decided. "And we take her from Fifth Harbour. Tell Ksana to gather anyone who's up for a bit of silent theft, would you?" Damu and Inej shared a smile. "The Gull will be ours come morning."

∆

They slid into Fifth Harbour just two hours after the Gull, unnoticed. Inej waited by the gangway and watched the gloomy city draw ever closer with Ksana, her first mate, a perpetually grinning girl with chopped-short hair who always seemed to be carrying more gunpowder than was strictly appropriate. The look she got on her face when Inej told her to lay waste to something reminded Inej painfully of Wylan sometimes. But the two couldn't have been more different. Ksana was always bouncing on her toes and up the rigging and ready for a fistfight, whereas Wylan had been small and shy and friendly.

True to her word, Ksana had gathered the most light-footed sailors they had, and so the two of them were surrounded by a small crowd of slender, stretchy people. The kind of ghosted characters that lived up to the Wraith's name. 

Damu brought them just past Eil Komedie and they docked inside the South point of Fifth Harbour, eliciting no attention. Perfect. The gangway hit the dock with a thud and Inej eyed the Gull, tied up a few hundred yards away. Some of her team followed her gaze: she saw excitable Oktai's head turn and more serene Talia cast a seemingly careless glance in her peripheral vision. That was all she needed to know that they were with her, that they were as ready as she was. A look from the side of her eye. Inej _lived_ in her peripheral vision. 

She led the way down the gangway and her crew followed, her silent team interspersed with the sailors that she'd instructed to go and have a good time in the city, so as not to rouse suspicion. They were under strict orders, however, _not_ to visit the West Stave and to return in exactly three hours. Most likely, the crew of the Gull would be out in the Barrel, gambling and fornicating, and then later, they'd return to drunkenly sell off a few slaves to the brothels. Inej had enough time to bring the Gull out of Fifth Harbour and onto the open ocean, with the Wraith following, before the Gull's crew returned. 

The crew dissipated into the docks, Inej's team going right towards the Gull, and the decoy team, whooping and shouting and drawing attention, making their way left towards East Stave and the Lid.

The Slat was far into the city, but even so, Inej felt a shiver of nostalgia as she slipped, soft-footed, into the shadows. She almost forgot she was leading a contingent of thieves, and just about managed not to steal away, melt into the stone and canals of the city, just like she used to do. The team probably would have kept up, anyway. 

The nostalgic tremble grew as Inej looked back and caught sight of the sugar plantations across the water, and images of a white-clothed Shadow and the ground beneath a tightrope flashed, unbidden, into Inej's mind. She paused for a second, and her team stopped with her. She had bled too much history and pain into these docks to just walk through them without a care. She had too much unfinished business to just commit her theft and vanish. She owed this city, _something_ , something like revenge, or closure. Or maybe she thought she owed the Dregs, or Kaz, or Wylan and Jesper. But she knew she couldn't do what she'd set out to. She'd known it from the start.

Inej turned to her team and looked at Ksana, vibrating with boundless energy, then at Jan and Talia, calm and deadly. She chose Jan to lead, ignoring Ksana's indignant quiver, as he was her second mate, and, she thought, much more suited to this than Ksana. Ksana might get excited and blow something up, and that was the opposite of what they wanted.

"Quiet. If you have to kill, weigh the bodies down and drop them in the water past Eil Komedie. Good luck."

"Where are you going?" Oktai asked as Inej turned to leave. Inej paused, and chanced a look over her shoulder, past the stares of her team, over to the Sweet Reef. Again, the flash of a tightrope, the sing of a bloody wound.

"I have business in the Barrel," said Inej, so quietly that the wind snatched it away before it had reached anyone's ears except Talia and Ksana. They both nodded seriously, and let her slip away.

∆

As she ran and climbed and danced through the dark wind, Inej prayed for her team. In her mind, she lent them her knives, and recited their names, adding a quick prayer for each.

_Sankt Petyr, protect them._  
Sankta Alina, protect them.  
Sankta Maria, Sankta Anastasia, Sankta Lizabeta, Sankt Vladimir. Protect them. 

The city spun out beneath her toes, as sure and loud and thick as she remembered. The closer she came to the Slat, the quicker her heart beat, the faster her breaths came. Below her, as she ran across roofs, a boy picked the pocket of a man stumping through an alleyway. Beside her, as she skimmed the wall with her feet and ran in shadow, two young men conversed in hushed tones. She didn't care for their conversation, but she caught it anyway. She was still a Wraith. Still a Spider. Old habits die hard.

"He wants the Dime Lions completely eliminated. I'm telling ya, that's the truth. He'll do it any way he can. Now give me my _kruge_."

" _How_ will he do it? That's what we want to know!"

"He just wants you out of Fifth Harbour!" Inej ran on, trying to ignore the hate curling in her stomach. So the Dime Lions were still going strong, then. She wasn't part of the Dregs anymore, she told herself. She shouldn't care. Even so, she tucked the information away carefully and ruminated over it as she approached East Stave.

It glittered brighter than she remembered, and was louder, too, the noise reaching her even as she stood atop a tall building. Kaz must have been busy. And there in the distance, stood the Slat. Crooked and wily and black against even the darkest sky, and Inej allowed herself one single moment of hesitation, before she threw her hood up over her hair and started towards it. Down to the streets, in amongst the cheering, drunken crowd of the night, weaving between Komedie Brute characters and jingling pockets and whispers of conversation. She threw it all to the wind, faster and faster, until she stood just before the Slat, leant against the dirty wall of the Crow Club, watching the collection of gang members and barkers and tourists milling around. She looked up, all the way to the attic, the wall winding into the cloudy night sky. The window ledge, and the crows hopping around outside it. Inej slid up to the wall, laid one finger momentarily on the sleeve covering her Dregs tattoo. And then she began to climb.


	2. Dirtyhands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a game of Hide and Seek, but with emotions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what you're in for just your regular super deep and rock solid tension filled Kanej

As she climbed, doubts began to crowd her once-clear destination. Kaz had moved. Kaz had given up leadership of the Dregs. Kaz had found a new Spider. But the window ledge, _her_ window ledge, was empty and beckoning above her, so she pushed away her doubts and pushed herself further into the sky.

Inej hoisted herself onto the window frame, and the wood groaned silently beneath her. On the roof tiles, across the thin alley between the Slat and the Crow Club, a pair of crows hopped around each other in uneven circles like two ruffians sizing each other up. Kaz's attic room was dark and empty, and Inej had one more, sudden, vertigo-inducing doubt. Surely he'd be surveying his success on the East Stave. Maybe visiting Jesper and Wylan. Maybe hunting down the last vestiges of the Dime Lions. But wherever he was, he wasn't here.

†††††††††††††††††††††

It took longer than usual to get up the stairs, with members of the Dregs going in and out of rooms, swinging like hinged mannequins in the doorways, laughing on the stairs. Most of them probably should have been working, but even Kaz wasn't one to disprove a victorious night. They'd spent the better part of two weeks slowly emptying out the Dime Lions, draining them of their money and their resources and scattering them from Ketterdam into the country. Then that night, the Dregs had come into a huge sum: one hundred thousand _kruge_ , a jackpot from days strenuously spent bleeding the Lions dry.

Anika and Roeder grinned manically at Kaz from the window sill, toasting him with bottles of alcohol, and Kaz nodded in reply, and climbed ever higher, keen to get away from the noise. He was tired, cold, and ready to put a long, damp day to rest. He unlocked the door to his room and pushed it open with the foot of his cane. Waited. No one inside. He walked in, _tap click tap_ of a shoe, cane, shoe, and paused. The moon was clear and silvery and so bright, he'd seen it sagging over the Slat before he'd entered. So why was the patch of moonlight on his floor grey and shifting?

"Wraith," he said, and he set his cane aside.

She had been waiting a year to hear that growl of a voice. She hadn't known that was what she'd been restlessly missing, but now she did. And yet. _Wraith_. He knew her name. He should use it. Inej gripped the top of the window frame with one hand and waited, and watched.

"Evening, Inej," he amended, finally, and her mouth split in a smile. A smile so bright she felt it had swallowed all the moonlight from behind her and cast it out in a puddle on the opposite wall.

"You've done well with the Dregs, Kaz. I saw from the Prince. East Stave glitters brighter than ever." He tugged off one glove, then the other, and laid them carefully on the desk, where they slowly deflated until they held nothing, not even air. He still hadn't looked at the window, at her, and he ran a finger along the brim of his hat, then took it off and put it beside his gloves. Still no look. Saints, she should have visited Jesper instead. At least then she'd get a warm welcome.

He couldn't look at her. He wanted to save that moment, that last indication that it was really her, perched on his window sill like she'd just dropped from the sky.

"Did you feed the birds?" he asked carelessly, sliding out of his jacket. Silence. No movement. For a second, one terrible moment, he was wrenchingly sure she'd gone again, tired with him already.

"I came to see you first."

"You didn't stop by Jesper and Wylan's?"

"Well, now I'm wishing I had. Not that you don't seem glad to see me, it's just...you don't seem glad to see me." Sarcasm and annoyance dripped anew from every word. Kaz looked up with a smile he couldn't pat down.

"It's good to see you." Her hood was up, but the gleam of her eye was unmistakable, the shine of her hair, the curve of her chin. Not some cruel trick, or dehydrated hallucination. Not even in a dream could he re-create Inej Ghafa.

It was all she'd ever wanted to hear from him. But it was glad and hopeful, expectant. He'd known she would be here, tonight, now.

"How did you know I'd come?" she asked, hopping comfortably down from the window sill into his room. He hung his jacket on the back of his chair and she sat on it, one arm over the back, chin rested on the back of her hand. 

Kaz looked away from her sparkling expression, away from the demand of wit and play and answers.

"There were two options, and I didn't think you'd waste a perfectly good ship on your bomb-happy first mate."

"She's not _so_ bomb-happy anymore. I like to think I've trained it out of her."

"You can't take the spark from someone who loves to watch things burn."

"Eloquent," she snorted, and Kaz felt all of his blood turn to warm sludge in his chest, all at once. He turned away, ran a hand over the side of his head, and started to toe off his shoes carefully.

"You know me."

"Yes, I do."

He wouldn't look at her, which was probably just as well, because Inej's face just wouldn't conform to stern neutrality. She was smiling like a giddy idiot just looking at him, never mind when he started to talk.

"You've got a mole in the Dregs, Kaz." Maybe that was the wrong subject, but Inej didn't want to dance on the frayed tightrope between emotion. Saints knew Kaz would rather fall, too. He undid his top button and his tie and frowned.

"A year on, and you're still spinning your webs. Who was it?"

"You spun the webs. I brought you silk." She turned her head sideways and watched how the muscles in the back of his neck moved when he rolled his head to work out aches. "And I don't know. New, probably, I didn't recognise him. Male, looked Kaelish, but he spoke perfect Kerch."

"Inej, you didn't come here to repay me for sending you information," he said, finally turning back around to face her. She didn't let her smile drop. She had mere hours, she wasn't going to waste them playing with expressions.

"Maybe I missed you," she replied. Kaz very much froze, and Inej's heart plunged. She couldn't think of another time when she'd been that forward, that flirtatious; maybe Ksana's brash energy was rubbing off on her.

She'd never said anything like that to him. She'd been teasing and playful, but never outright coquettish. Witty, maybe, sarcastic. Verbally sparring. Kaz blinked and Inej stopped burning her gaze into his, flicking her eyes away and digging her cheek into the place where he knew her first knife was hidden. The knife he'd given her. _I can help you_.

"I-"

At the same time, "You don't have to-" Maybe his voice broke on that one word, but neither of them would know. Just in case, Kaz cleared his throat before he spoke again.

"I missed you. As well." The sentiment passed between them like Inej always used to, past him in the shadows, above him on the roofs, little more than a ghost. A Wraith. He looked down at his ungloved hands. Unprotected. So very open. "How long are you here for?"

"I just came to see you." If he tilted his head, he could hear longing in her voice, a corner, a suggestion of want. If he tilted his head; maybe their relationship was just a matter of perspective. "About two and a half hours," she said, and she finally looked back at him. He looked around to put his shoes back on again, fumbling a little stupidly.

"Do you want to go and see Jesper and Wylan?" he asked, stuffing his feet in and already reaching for his hat. His tie was still undone: it didn't matter. Inej had never cared. He sounded like his ten year old self, begging for hot chocolate: it didn't matter. Inej would never care. She grinned like he'd offered her the world, and it stopped his heart for at least seven seconds. She slid off the stool and over to the window, silent as always, and she folded her tiny body out onto the side of the building and cast him a different look, that secretive smile he'd been waiting for.

"Have a long walk down," she said, and she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I tagged this as emotionally constipated teenagers, I WASN'T KIDDING


	3. Geraniums

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The goodbyes are less hard when you know they'll return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's terrible but I'm afraid I'm dying on this hill. Great! Finished! Awesome.

Jesper and Wylan were predictably ecstatic to see Inej, wide grins plastered across both faces, albeit somewhat confused. Kaz stood back as all six foot four of Jesper enveloped Inej in a hug, and she disappeared beneath his long arms.

"That's what I meant by glad to see me, Kaz," Inej quipped once she'd disentangled herself from Jesper. Kaz didn't smile, but it was a close suggestion of expression that crossed his face.

"Kaz is smiling," Wylan offered bemusedly, pushing his curly head past Jesper's shoulder, and in an instant, Kaz had rearranged his face to stone. Wylan didn't even flinch, to his credit. A whole new man, Inej thought. "Come on and sit down," he said, waving them through to the grand parlour, and Jesper grinned at Wylan over Inej's head. 

Wylan and Inej walked away into the parlour, and Jesper looked back to see Kaz gazing into the middle distance.

"You two are having a good time," he said after a second, a little stilted, and Jesper frowned.

"Be pretty awkward if we weren't." Kaz nodded and stared down at his cane, as if fortifying himself. "Hey, Kaz. She's back. What's so wrong?" he asked, utterly destabilised by this new, uncertain Kaz.

"She's different," Kaz replied, with a narrowing of his dark eyes. His hand gripped his cane, bone white. "I shouldn't be surprised."

"She seemed pretty much the same," Jesper replied, trying his best not to sound confused.

"When she was in Ketterdam, she was...quieter. When she was with us, she was just Inej."

"You think, a year at sea brought out who she'd been before the Menagerie," Jesper guessed wildly. But Kaz nodded.

"If that's how you want to put it."

"Hey, this is an opportunity!" Jesper said excitedly. "Really get to know her! Work on your relationship-"

"Don't give me relationship advice, Fahey," Kaz said amusedly, but Jesper carried on.

"-I mean you did buy her a boat so she could go away, but what can't be fixed, right?" He grinned like a madman, excitable at the thought of annoying Kaz even further. He nodded at the barely noticeable bulge in Kaz's coat as they started to walk after Inej and Wylan into the parlour. "What's that?"

"How's your father?" Kaz asked, ignoring Jesper's question. He'd taken the very long way round to the Van Eck mansion, through the harbour, but no one need know. Jesper gave him a look, but as Inej was now in earshot, he relented.

"He's doing just fine. The farm is booming, but you already knew that." Jesper shrugged. "I guess he's happy. He likes Wylan, too, so that's all I need." He sprang into the long sofa in a mess of rubbery limbs, and grinned wildly at Wylan, who was sitting on the floor playing cards with Inej. Kaz watched Inej's hand carefully, but before he'd completely studied it, Wylan groaned and gave up.

"You used to be so much worse at cards," he grumbled, and Inej grinned as he handed her a couple of _kruge_ notes.

"A year at sea gives you all the skills you need," she replied mischievously. She flashed the cards at Jesper, teasing. "You want to play?" They all watched him squirm longingly, but eventually he gave up and shook his head. 

"I'm out," he said, settling into the cushions, and Wylan cheered and Inej stared, wide-eyed.

"Really? You're not gambling anymore?"

"It's uncomfortable, but I'm trying," Jesper said, sneaking a look at Kaz, who smiled.

"Wow," Inej said. "Well, I'm proud. Kaz? Cards?"

"This I cannot wait to see," Wylan said wickedly, climbing onto the sofa beside Jesper and worming into his side. Inej shuffled the cards, split the deck, and held out Kaz's hand towards him. Kaz looked from her shining eye to her steady hand, and lowered himself to the ground, ready to wipe the floor with her.

†††††††††††††††††††††

He didn't wipe the floor with her, but they did end up playing cards for almost an hour in the warm, comfy parlour, until Inej saw the time and told them that she should leave. It was getting close to midnight, and the Gull would be leaving the harbour soon, commandeered and ready to sail. 

"I'll walk you back," Kaz said, digging his cane into the ground and rising with difficulty. He ignored Jesper's pointed and grinning look, and they said their goodbyes, Inej promised to visit again, and then they left, this time walking side by side. 

He watched her eyes darting over the dark rooftops, and knew she longed to melt back into the shadows, move, wraith-like, through Ketterdam like she used to, one last time. It was as if he was competing with the city, chasing her down and offering her something golden, something better. _I can help you_. Kaz pinched the fingers of his right glove, one by one, and slid it off, into his pocket. He'd gotten better with bare skin. Not much, but better. And he searched through the space between them for her hand, and slipped his fingers in between hers.

He'd have been a fool not to notice her shock. Her step faltered, something he'd never seen before, and the side of her eye that he could see, widened dramatically. His skin slid against hers, not cold and bloated. Warm and smooth and strong. Kaz swallowed a fast heartbeat and the uncertainty of a year before, and she tightened her grip against his as they walked, hand in hand, to the harbour.

They stopped in a shadow of a tower of crates, just a few yards from the Gull. It bobbed in the harbour, seemingly happy and silent. Kaz knew better than that. Someone stood guard, but it wasn't one of the trader's crew; it was a member of the Wraith, Oktai, if Kaz remembered correctly. Inej snuck a few looks over at the Wraith, then the Gull, and when she seemed satisfied, she drew back to the shadows, to Kaz.

"I'll be gone for a while," she said, staring him straight in the eye. They were still holding hands, and this was the best thing to happen to Kaz since a priceless Shu scientist and the king of Ravka. No, scratch that. The best thing, period.

"I know," he replied. Then, "I'll miss you." Even in the dark, her smile was wide and bright. He stuck his other hand into his coat, and pulled out the flowers that he'd detoured to the harbour to get. It had taken him a while, and they were a little squashed, but-

"Geraniums," Inej said, breathlessly, like she was about to laugh. Or cry. "You remembered." Kaz shrugged, and held them out.

"I'm making up for drowning them, last time," he joked, and she smiled even wider and wrapped her fingers around the stems.

"Thank you." He wasn't prepared for what came next. She threw her arms around him, and her cheek was pressed against his neck, and it was skin on skin but...it was nice. He held her against him for as long as he dared, and then they let each other go with a blur of smiles and nervous hearts. She turned to her ships, geraniums in hand, and he watched her go with trepidation. 

She'd come back, maybe even more changed. And he'd be waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh.
> 
> Comment if you liked it!


End file.
